Members Can Post Anonymously On This Site
-
Similar Topics
-
-
By European Space Agency
Video: 00:08:04 Space Debris: Is it a Crisis?
The European Space Agency’s short documentary film ‘Space Debris: Is it a Crisis?’ on the state of space debris premiered at the 9th European Conference on Space Debris on 1 April 2025.
Earth is surrounded by thousands of satellites carrying out important work to provide telecommunications and navigation services, help us understand our climate, and answer fundamental questions about the Universe.
However, as our use of space accelerates like never before, these satellites find themselves navigating increasingly congested orbits in an environment criss-crossed by streams of fast-moving debris fragments resulting from collisions, fragmentations and breakups in space.
Each fragment can damage additional satellites, with fears that a cascade of collisions may eventually render some orbits around Earth no longer useable. Additionally, the extent of the harm of the drastic increase in launches and number of objects re-entering our atmosphere and oceans is not yet known.
So, does space debris already represent a crisis?
The documentary explores the current situation in Earth’s orbits and explains the threat space debris poses to our future in space. It also outlines what might be done about space debris and how we might reach true sustainability in space, because our actions today will have consequences for generations to come.
ESA’s Space Safety Programme
ESA’s Space Safety Programme aims to safeguard the future of spaceflight and to keep us, Earth and our infrastructure on the ground and in space safe from hazards originating in space.
From asteroids and solar storms to the human-made problem of space debris, ESA works on missions and projects to understand the dangers and mitigate them.
In the longer term, to ensure a safe and sustainable future in space, ESA aims to establish a circular economy in space. To get there, the Agency is working on the technology development necessary to make in-orbit servicing and zero-debris spacecraft a reality.
View the full article
-
By NASA
NASA The instrument enclosure of NASA’s Near-Earth Object Surveyor is prepared for critical environmental tests inside the historic Chamber A at the Space Environment Simulation Laboratory at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston in December 2024. Wrapped in silver thermal blanketing, the 12-foot-long (3.7-meter-long) angular structure was subjected to the frigid, airless conditions that the spacecraft will experience when in deep space. The cavernous thermal-vacuum test facility is famous for testing the Apollo spacecraft that traveled to the Moon in the 1960s and ’70s.
The instrument enclosure is designed to protect the spacecraft’s infrared telescope while also removing heat from it during operations. After environmental testing was completed, the enclosure returned to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California for further work, after which it will ship to the Space Dynamics Laboratory (SDL) in Logan, Utah, and be joined to the telescope. Both the instrument enclosure and telescope were assembled at JPL.
As NASA’s first space-based detection mission specifically designed for planetary defense, NEO Surveyor will seek out, measure, and characterize the hardest-to-find asteroids and comets that might pose a hazard to Earth. While many near-Earth objects don’t reflect much visible light, they glow brightly in infrared light due to heating by the Sun. The spacecraft’s telescope, which has an aperture of nearly 20 inches (50 centimeters), features detectors sensitive to two infrared wavelengths in which near-Earth objects re-radiate solar heat.
More information about NEO Surveyor is available at: https://science.nasa.gov/mission/neo-surveyor/
Image credit: NASA
View the full article
-
By NASA
Explore This SectionWebb NewsLatest News Latest Images Blog (offsite) Awards X (offsite – login reqd) Instagram (offsite – login reqd) Facebook (offsite- login reqd) Youtube (offsite) OverviewAbout Who is James Webb? Fact Sheet Impacts+Benefits FAQ ScienceOverview and Goals Early Universe Galaxies Over Time Star Lifecycle Other Worlds ObservatoryOverview Launch Deployment Orbit Mirrors Sunshield Instrument: NIRCam Instrument: MIRI Instrument: NIRSpec Instrument: FGS/NIRISS Optical Telescope Element Backplane Spacecraft Bus Instrument Module MultimediaAbout Webb Images Images Videos What is Webb Observing? 3d Webb in 3d Solar System Podcasts Webb Image Sonifications TeamInternational Team People Of Webb MoreFor the Media For Scientists For Educators For Fun/Learning 5 Min Read NASA’s Webb Telescope Unmasks True Nature of the Cosmic Tornado
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope observed Herbig-Haro 49/50, an outflow from a nearby still-forming star, in high-resolution near- and mid-infrared light. Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI Craving an ice cream sundae with a cherry on top? This random alignment of Herbig-Haro 49/50 — a frothy-looking outflow from a nearby protostar — with a multi-hued spiral galaxy may do the trick. This new composite image combining observations from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) and MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) provides a high-resolution view to explore the exquisite details of this bubbling activity.
Herbig-Haro objects are outflows produced by jets launched from a nearby, forming star. The outflows, which can extend for light-years, plow into a denser region of material. This creates shock waves, heating the material to higher temperatures. The material then cools by emitting light at visible and infrared wavelengths.
Image A:
Herbig-Haro 49/50 (NIRCam and MIRI Image)
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope observed Herbig-Haro 49/50, an outflow from a nearby still-forming star, in high-resolution near- and mid-infrared light. The intricate features of the outflow, represented in reddish-orange color, provide detailed clues about how young stars form and how their jet activity affects the environment around them. Like the wake of a speeding boat, the bow shocks in this image have an arc-like appearance as the fast-moving jet from the young star slams into the surrounding dust and gas. A chance alignment in this direction of the sky provides a beautiful juxtaposition of this nearby Herbig-Haro object with a more distant spiral galaxy in the background. Herbig-Haro 49/50 gives researchers insights into the early phases of the formation of low-mass stars similar to our own Sun. In this Webb image, blue represents light at 2.0-microns (F200W), cyan represents light at 3.3-microns (F335M), green is 4.4-microns (F444W), orange is 4.7-microns (F470N), and red is 7.7-microns (F770W).NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI When NASA’s retired Spitzer Space Telescope observed it in 2006, scientists nicknamed Herbig-Haro 49/50 (HH 49/50) the “Cosmic Tornado” for its helical appearance, but they were uncertain about the nature of the fuzzy object at the tip of the “tornado.” With its higher imaging resolution, Webb provides a different visual impression of HH 49/50 by revealing fine features of the shocked regions in the outflow, uncovering the fuzzy object to be a distant spiral galaxy, and displaying a sea of distant background galaxies.
Image B:
Herbig-Haro 49/50 (Spitzer and Webb Images Side-by-Side)
This side-by-side comparison shows a Spitzer Space Telescope Infrared Array Camera image of HH 49/50 (left) versus a Webb image of the same object (right) using the NIRCam (Near-infrared Camera) instrument and MIRI (Mid-infrared Instrument). The Webb image shows intricate details of the heated gas and dust as the protostellar jet slams into the material. Webb also resolves the “fuzzy” object located at the tip of the outflow into a distant spiral galaxy. The Spitzer image shows 3.6-micron light in blue, the 4.5-micron in green, and the 8.0-micron in red (IRAC1, IRAC2, IRAC4). In the Webb image, blue represents light at 2.0-microns (F200W), cyan represents light at 3.3-microns (F335M), green is 4.4-microns (F444W), orange is 4.7-microns (F470N), and red is 7.7-microns (F770W).NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, NASA-JPL, SSC HH 49/50 is located in the Chamaeleon I Cloud complex , one of the nearest active star formation regions in our Milky Way, which is creating numerous low-mass stars similar to our Sun. This cloud complex is likely similar to the environment that our Sun formed in. Past observations of this region show that the HH 49/50 outflow is moving away from us at speeds of 60-190 miles per second (100-300 kilometers per second) and is just one feature of a larger outflow.
Webb’s NIRCam and MIRI observations of HH 49/50 trace the location of glowing hydrogen molecules, carbon monoxide molecules, and energized grains of dust, represented in orange and red, as the protostellar jet slams into the region. Webb’s observations probe details on small spatial scales that will help astronomers to model the properties of the jet and understand how it is affecting the surrounding material.
The arc-shaped features in HH 49/50, similar to a water wake created by a speeding boat, point back to the source of this outflow. Based on past observations, scientists suspect that a protostar known as Cederblad 110 IRS4 is a plausible driver of the jet activity. Located roughly 1.5 light-years away from HH 49/50 (off the lower right corner of the Webb image), CED 110 IRS4 is a Class I protostar. Class I protostars are young objects (tens of thousands to a million years old) in the prime time of gaining mass. They usually have a discernable disk of material surrounding them that is still falling onto the protostar. Scientists recently used Webb’s NIRCam and MIRI observations to study this protostar and obtain an inventory of the icy composition of its environment.
These detailed Webb images of the arcs in HH 49/50 can more precisely pinpoint the direction to the jet source, but not every arc points back in the same direction. For example, there is an unusual outcrop feature (at the top right of the main outflow) which could be another chance superposition of a different outflow, related to the slow precession of the intermittent jet source. Alternatively, this feature could be a result of the main outflow breaking apart.
The galaxy that appears by happenstance at the tip of HH 49/50 is a much more distant, face-on spiral galaxy. It has a prominent central bulge represented in blue that shows the location of older stars. The bulge also shows hints of “side lobes” suggesting that this could be a barred-spiral galaxy. Reddish clumps within the spiral arms show the locations of warm dust and groups of forming stars. The galaxy even displays evacuated bubbles in these dusty regions, similar to nearby galaxies observed by Webb as part of the PHANGS program.
Webb has captured these two unassociated objects in a lucky alignment. Over thousands of years, the edge of HH 49/50 will move outwards and eventually appear to cover up the distant galaxy.
Want more? Take a closer look at the image, “fly through” it in a visualization, and compare Webb’s image to the Spitzer Space Telescope’s.
Herbig-Haro 49/50 is located about 625 light-years from Earth in the constellation Chamaeleon.
The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb will solve mysteries in our solar system, look beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probe the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Canadian Space Agency.
Downloads
Click any image to open a larger version.
View/Download all image products at all resolutions for this article from the Space Telescope Science Institute.
Media Contacts
Laura Betz – laura.e.betz@nasa.gov
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
Quyen Hart – qhart@stsci.edu
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.
Christine Pulliam – cpulliam@stsci.edu
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.
Related Information
Images – Webb images of other protostar outflows – L483, HH 46/47, and HH 211
Animation Video – “Exploring Star and Planet Formation”
Interactive – Explore the jets emitted by young stars in multiple wavelengths: ViewSpace Interactive
Article – Read more about Herbig-Haro objects
More Webb News
More Webb Images
Webb Science Themes
Webb Mission Page
Related For Kids
What is the Webb Telescope?
SpacePlace for Kids
En Español
Ciencia de la NASA
NASA en español
Space Place para niños
Keep Exploring Related Topics
James Webb Space Telescope
Webb is the premier observatory of the next decade, serving thousands of astronomers worldwide. It studies every phase in the…
Stars
Galaxies
Universe
Share
Details
Last Updated Mar 23, 2025 EditorStephen SabiaContactLaura Betzlaura.e.betz@nasa.gov Related Terms
James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) Astrophysics Goddard Space Flight Center Science & Research Stars Stellar Evolution The Universe View the full article
-
By Amazing Space
Stunning Solar Prominences Captured with LUNT LS50THa Telescope | H-alpha Solar Observation
-
-
Check out these Videos
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.